The Palm Beach County School Board is expected to vote on a tentative agreement on health insurance reached last month between the school district and the labor unions representing most of its employees.

The health insurance collective bargaining agreement, which would take effect on Jan. 1, would increase the monthly health insurance premiums paid by employees in the “High Option HMO” plan by $27.50 per month for the employee alone up to an increase of $60 per month for employees whose families are also covered under the High Option plan.

Employees in the lower option HMO plan, where employees pay higher deductibles than the low option plan before their insurance kicks in, would not face any monthly premium increases for themselves or their family to be covered.

Employees in the district’s PPO plan would face premium increases between $6 and $60 per month. District Risk and Benefits Manager Dianne Howard estimated there were only about 65 employees remaining in the PPO plan.

District officials have said they need employees to pay higher premiums because the cost of health insurance claims by district’s roughly 20,000 employees is estimated to increase has been increasing for several years and could go up as much as $20 million this year. Howard said tat as part of the tentative agreement the district would contribute about $15 million to cover most of that increase.

If the school board approves the health insurance agreement, the four unions that represent the district’s teachers, laborers, secretaries and police officers must also vote to approve the agreement before it becomes binding.

Afifa Khaliq, spokeswoman for the Service Employees International Union, released a statement on behalf of the union commending the fact that both sides were able to hold the proposed premium increases in the high option plan below the national average for premium increase and were able to avoid any premium increases in the other plan.

Khaliq said the unions and the district also reached a tentative agreement to do a cost analysis study next year on the idea of the district running its own health clinics which for district employee and whether doing so would save the district money.

In other business, the school will hold a workshop to discuss its process for reviewing and approving applications for new charter schools. The board is also expected to vote on the final proposed contracts for several new charter schools including the Somerset Academy Middle and High charter schools that would be located on Boynton Beach Boulevard just west of Lyons Road.

Parents in unincorporated western Boynton Beach attracted Somerset to bring a charter school to their community after the district declined to build a new middle school on district-owned land in the area, saying there was enough capacity at existing area middle schools. Parents in the Canyons neighborhoods also said they wanted their own high school because the one their children is zoned to attend, Olympic Heights, is too far away at roughly 13 miles from the Canyons area.

One of the parents organizing the charter drive, Eleni Pantiridis, saidSomerset had not yet set a groundbreaking date for the west Boynton charter school, which is slated to open in August.

The schools board is also expected to vote on a proposal to outsource the transportation department’s auto parts maintenance function to the NAPA auto parts company. Currently the school district maintains its own stockpile of auto parts to maintain district buses and vehicles.

The outsourcing agreement would pay NAPA maintain that parts inventory instead and the company would be required to have at least 80 percent of the parts the district would need in stock locally. According to Chief of Support Operations Joe Sanches a district cost analysis has estimated the district could save as much as $914,000 the first year and $393,000 per year in subsequent years by outsourcing auto parts.